A separatist leader in Donetsk says a judge in a Moscow-controlled Ukrainian town is in a “serious” condition after surviving an assassination attempt.
Alexander Nikulin was a member of a court that sentenced to death in June two Britons, Aiden Aslin and Sean Benner, and Moroccan Ibrahim Saadoun, who were fighting on the Ukrainian side.
The British were captured in Ukraine But he returned home in September.
“There was an attempt to use firearms on the judge of the Supreme Court of the Donetsk Republic, Alexander Nikulin,” said Denis Pushlin, the rebel leader of the self-proclaimed republic on Telegram.
He blamed Kyiv, saying the attack took place Friday evening in the town of Vohlhersk in the eastern Donetsk region.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s state electric company on Saturday announced power outages in Kyiv and seven other regions of the country in the wake of devastating Russian strikes on energy infrastructure.
The move comes at a time when Russian forces continue to bombard Ukrainian cities and villages with missiles and drones, causing damage to power stations, water supplies and other civilian targets, in a brutal war of nearly nine months.
Russia denied that the drones it used in Ukraine came from Iran, but the Islamic Republic’s foreign minister on Saturday admitted for the first time Supplying Moscow with a “limited number” of UAVs before the invasion.
However, Hossein Amir Abdollahian said Tehran did not know if its drones had been used against Ukraine and confirmed Iran’s commitment to stopping the conflict.
Ukrenergo, the only operator of high-voltage transmission lines in Ukraine, initially said in an online statement on Saturday that scheduled power outages will occur in the capital and the greater Kyiv region, as well as several surrounding regions – Chernihiv, Cherkasy, Zhytomyr. , Sumy, Poltava and Kharkiv.
Later in the day, the company released an update saying that outages scheduled for a set number of hours will not be enough, and instead there will be emergency outages, which may last for an indefinite amount of time.
Ukraine has been suffering from blackouts and disruption of water supplies since Russia began firing a barrage of rockets and drones at the country’s energy infrastructure last month.
Moscow said these came in response to what it claimed were Ukrainian attacks on Crimea, the region illegally annexed by Russia in 2014. Ukraine has denied the allegations.
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